Different types of mining and construction machines, such as excavators, wheel loaders, hydraulic mining shovels, cable shovels, bucket wheels, and draglines commonly employ buckets to dig and remove the earth being worked or materials being excavated or loaded. The buckets frequently experience extreme wear from the loading forces and highly abrasive materials encountered during operation. Replacement of the large buckets and other implements used in mining and construction machinery can be very costly and labor intensive.
The bucket can be equipped with a ground engaging tool (GET) or a set of GETs to help protect the bucket and other earth working tools from wear. Typically, a GET can be in the form of teeth, edge protectors, tips, or other removable components that can be attached to the areas of the bucket or other tool where most damaging and repeated abrasions and impacts occur. For example, a GET in the form of edge protectors can wrap around a bucket's cutting edge to help protect it from excessive wear.
In such applications, the removable GET can be subjected to wear from abrasion and repeated impact, while helping to protect the bucket or other implement to which it can be mounted. When the GET becomes worn through use, it can be removed and replaced with a new GET at a reasonable cost to permit the continued use of the same bucket. By protecting the implement with a GET and replacing the worn GET at appropriate intervals, significant cost and time savings are possible.
A GET can have a variety of forms. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,762,015 for a “Ground Engaging Tool System,” issued Jul. 27, 2010, to Smith et al. is directed to a ground engaging tool system with a ground engaging tool such as a tip, an adapter mounted to or part of a work tool, and a rotating lock member. The ground engaging tool can be attached to the adapter, and a post portion of the adapter slides into a slot provided on the lock member. The lock member can be rotated so that the entrance to the slot can be blocked and the post cannot slide out of the slot. The lock member in this position can be in a locking position, and the retention of the post in the slot of the lock member retains the ground engaging tool to the adapter.
The cost and time savings available from using a GET to protect large machine implements can be further enhanced by increasing the lifespan of the GET. Thus, a more durable GET system can result in fewer work stoppages for part replacements, thereby resulting in higher work efficiency. There is an ongoing need in the art for an improved GET system that increases the useful life of GET tools resulting in fewer replacements and increased productivity.
It will be appreciated that this background description has been created by the inventors to aid the reader, and is not to be taken as an indication that any of the indicated problems were themselves appreciated in the art. While the described principles can, in some respects and embodiments, alleviate the problems inherent in other systems, it will be appreciated that the scope of the protected innovation is defined by the attached claims, and not by the ability of any disclosed feature to solve any specific problem noted herein.